Monday, 21 November 2016

REVIEW: Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy

Simon Lewis has been a human and a vampire, and now he is becoming a Shadowhunter. But the events of City of Heavenly Fire
left him stripped of his memories, and Simon isn’t sure who he is
anymore. He knows he was friends with Clary, and that he convinced the
total goddess Isabelle Lightwood to go out with him…but he doesn’t know
how. And when Clary and Isabelle look at him, expecting him to be a man
he doesn’t remember…Simon can’t take it.

So when the Shadowhunter
Academy reopens, Simon throws himself into this new world of
demon-hunting, determined to find himself again. His new self. Whomever
this new Simon might be.

But the Academy is a Shadowhunter
institution, which means it has some problems. Like the fact that
non-Shadowhunter students have to live in the basement. And that
differences—like being a former vampire—are greatly looked down upon. At
least Simon is trained in weaponry—even if it’s only from hours of
playing D&D.

Join Simon on his journey to become a
Shadowhunter, and learn about the Academy’s illustrious history along
the way, through guest lecturers such as Jace Herondale, Tessa Gray, and
Magnus Bane. These ten short stories give an epilogue to the Mortal
Instruments series and provide glimpses of what’s in store in the Dark
Artifices.

My Thoughts:
It's no secret that I completely ADORE
anything to do with the Shadowhunter world created by Cassandra
Clare, so needless to say I was very excited to find out there would
be a series of short stories about Simon Lewis from The Mortal
Instruments! Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy follows Simon's next
two years after the events at the end of City of Heavenly Fire. He's
at the newly reopened academy, training to become a Shadowhunter.
Whilst there he meets his room-mate George Lovelace, and the two of
them quickly become friends.

The book consists of ten short stories
written by Cassie herself and her fellow writers Sarah Rees Brennan,
Maureen Johnson, and Robin Wasserman. Whilst following Simon's
journey, we also get plenty of updates on the other main characters
from TMI, along with a few stories set back in time with the
characters from The Infernal Devices. This variety in the stories
kept me gripped. One of my personal favourites was Nothing But
Shadows, that gave us a chance to get to know the characters in
Cassie's future series The Last Hours. I'll admit that I wasn't
overly interested about this series for a while, mostly because there
are a lot of Shadowhunter stories (A LOT) and I didn't want to get
invested in one series whilst currently reading another (TDA. Like I
said, A LOT TO KEEP UP WITH). But this story completely pulled me in.
I fell in love with the characters and now I REALLY WANT TO READ THE
LAST HOURS AND GOD ONLY KNOWS WHEN IT'LL BE RELEASED. I loved being
able to jump from Simon and his friends in the modern day academy,
back to the academy in 1899 where we meet James Herondale and Matthew
Fairchild.

Whilst the book goes off on tangents to
tell us a collection of short stories, the journey of Simon and his
friends is constant throughout. With The Bane Chronicles (Cassie's
previous collection of short stories) it was possible to jump in and
out of the book at any story, but with this one it's better to read
all of the stories in order. It also gives a better insight into some
of the characters and situations we read about in the main
Shadowhunter books. For example, there is a story called Bitter of
Tongue that focuses on Mark Blackthorn from The Dark Artifices. My
absolute favourite story had to be Born To Endless Night, which
focused a little more on all of the TMI characters, specifically
Magnus Bane and Alec Lightwood. It had me laughing one minute and
then an emotional mess the other.

So the final story in this book
COMPLETELY TORE MY HEART OUT AND I'M NOT OKAY. I will mention that I
did already know the Major Event at the end. These stories were
released originally as eBooks on a monthly basis, but I knew they'd
be released in physical copy at a later date, so I decided to wait
until then to read them. Mostly because I like having physical copies
and also I was way too broke to buy one every month. I had no idea
that the short story at the end of Lady Midnight would contain a
spoiler for this book, but...it did. A very huge spoiler. So that
unfortunately meant I went through this whole book knowing the fate
of a main character, and whilst I wish I hadn't known it beforehand
because it would have packed more of an emotional punch, I still
found the ending powerful.

All of the stories within this book
were great to read and I enjoyed not only catching up with some old
favourite characters, but also meeting some amazing new ones. I loved
getting the chance to jump back into the Shadowhunter world again!